Mineral Resources behind US push to Africa

by Nile Bowie

KUALA LUMPUR - As public interest in
African affairs briefly found a place in mainstream talking points following a
controversial viral video campaign about Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA), both the United States and the African Union are
mobilizing military forces to Central Africa to counter further threats to
civilian safety posed by the group. Following the US deployment of one hundred
military personnel to Uganda in 2011, the African Union has recently announced
the deployment of a 5,000-solider brigade to LRA affected areas, tasked with
pursuing the group and its leader, Joseph Kony. [1] In the United States, a new
bill co-authored by U.S. Representative Edward Royce has been introduced to the
Congress calling for the further expansion of regional military forces into the
nations of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and
the newly formed South Sudan. [2]

Although the Lord’s Resistance Army has
been accused of recruiting child soldiers and conducting crimes against
humanity throughout its two-decade campaign for greater autonomy against the
Ugandan government, the group is presently comprised of less than four hundred
soldiers [3] and remains a questionable threat. Meanwhile, China’s deepening
economic engagement in Africa and its crucial role in developing the mining and
industrial sectors of several nations is reportedly creating "deep nervousness" in the West,
according to David Shinn, former US ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. [4]
As the Obama administration claims to welcome the peaceful rise of China on the
world stage, recent policy shifts toward an increased US military presence in several
alleged LRA hotspots threaten deepening Chinese commercial activity in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, widely considered the world’s most resource
rich nation. [5]

As China maintains a record of consistently strong
economic performance, Washington is crusading against China's export
restrictions on minerals that are crucial components in the production of
consumer electronics such as flat-screen televisions, smart phones, laptop
batteries, and a host of other products. As the United States, European Union
and Japan project international pressure on the World Trade Organization and
the World Bank to block financing for China’s extensive mining projects [6], US
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s irresponsible accusations of China perpetuating
a creeping "new colonialism" of
the African continent remain rather telling. [7] As China is predicted to
formally emerge as the world’s largest economy in 2016 [8], the successful
aggregation of African resources remains a key component to its ongoing rivalry
with the United States.

The villainous branding of Joseph Kony may well be
deserved, however it cannot be overstated that the LRA threat is wholly
misrepresented in recent pro-intervention US legislation. The vast majority of
LRA attacks have reportedly taken place in the north-eastern Bangadi region of
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, located on the foot of a tri-border
expanse between the Central African Republic and South Sudan. However, the
small number of deaths reported by official sources in recent times relies on
unconfirmed reports where LRA activity is "presumed" and "suspected"
[9]. Considering the Congo’s extreme instability after decades of
foreign invasion, falsely crediting the LRA with the region’s longstanding
cases of violence for political gain becomes relatively simple for those
looking to gain enormous contracts for Congolese resources.

In a 2010 white paper entitled "Critical Raw
Materials for the EU," the European Commission cites the immediate need for
reserve supplies of tantalum, cobalt, niobium, and tungsten among others [10];
the US Department of Energy 2010 white paper "Critical Mineral Strategy" also
acknowledged the strategic importance of these key components. [11] In 1980,
Pentagon experts acknowledged dire shortages of cobalt, titanium, chromium, tantalum,
beryllium, and nickel, eluding that rebel insurgencies in the Congo (referred
to as Zaire) inflated the cost of such materials. [12] Additionally, the US
Congressional Budget Office’s 1982 report "Cobalt: Policy Options for a
Strategic Mineral" notes that cobalt alloys are critical to the aerospace and weapons
industries and that 64% of the world’s cobalt reserves lay in the Katanga
Copper Belt, running from southeastern Congo into northern Zambia. [13]

During the Congo Wars of the 1996 to 2003, the United
States provided training and arms to Tutsi Rwandan and Ugandan militias who
later invaded the Congo’s mineral rich eastern provinces to pursue extremist
Hutu militias following the Rwandan genocide. Although over six million deaths
were attributed to the conflict in the Congo [14], findings of the United
Nations suggest that neighboring regimes in Ugandan, Rwanda and Burundi
benefitted immensely from illegally harvested conflict minerals, later sold to
various multinational corporations for use in consumer goods. [15] The US
defense industry relies on high quality metallic alloys indigenous to the
region, used primarily in the construction of high-performance jet engines. The
sole piece of legislation authored by President Obama during his time as a
Senator was S.B. 2125, the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief,
Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006; Section 201(6) of the bill
specifically calls for the protection of natural resources in the troubled
regions of eastern Congo. [16]

The Congo maintains the second lowest GDP per capita
despite having an estimated $24 trillion in untapped raw minerals deposits
[17]; it holds more than 30% of the world's diamond reserves [18] and 80% of the world's coltan [19], the majority of which is exported to China for
processing into electronic-grade tantalum powder and wiring. [20] The control
of strategic resources in the eastern Congo is a vital element of the ongoing
US-China rivalry, as Chinese commercial activities in the DRC continue to
increase in the fields of mining and telecommunications. The Congo exported
$1.4 billion worth of cobalt to China between 2007 and 2008 [21], while the majority
of Congolese raw materials like cobalt, copper ore and a variety of hard woods are exported to China for further processing [22]; 90% of the processing plants in resource rich southeastern Katanga
province are owned
by Chinese nationals. [23]

In 2008, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
blocked a trade deal between a consortium of Chinese companies, who were
granted the rights to mining operations in Katanga
in exchange for US$6 billion in infrastructure investments, including
the construction of two hospitals, four universities and a hydroelectric power
project. The framework of the deal allocated an additional $3 million to
develop cobalt and copper mining operations in Katanga, but the IMF argued that
the agreement between China and the DRC violated the foreign debt relief
program for so-called HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) nations. [24] The
marginalization of China by financial regulatory bodies is a strong indication
of its throttling rivalry with American and European corporate communities,
many of who fear being diluted in China’s increasing economic orbit.

While subtle economic warfare rages between partnered
superpowers, the increasing western military presence in the Congo is part of a
larger program to expand AFRICOM, the United States Africa Command, through a
proposed archipelago of American military bases in the region. In 2007, US
State Department advisor Dr. J. Peter Pham offered the following on AFRICOM and
its strategic objectives of "protecting access to hydrocarbons and other
strategic resources which Africa has in abundance, a task which includes
ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no
other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain
monopolies or preferential treatment." [25] The push into Africa
has more to do with destabilizing the deeply troubled Democratic Republic of
the Congo and capturing its strategic reserves of cobalt, tantalum, gold and
diamonds. More accurately, the US is poised to employ a scorched-earth policy by creating dangerous war-like conditions
in the Congo, prompting the mass exodus of Chinese investors. Similarly to the
Libyan conflict, the Chinese returned after the fall of Gaddafi to find a proxy
government only willing to do business with the western nations who helped it
into power. [26]

The European Union’s recently offered contribution of $12 million to joint military operations
against the ailing Lord’s Resistance Army suggests signs of a coming resource
war in Central Africa. [27]

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